Exit Wounds

"Jim Lommasson's Exit Wounds is not about art. It's not about politics or journalism either. It's about raw human experience: The suffering, the triumphs, the fear, the pride, the visceral truths that confront every individual touched by the violence of war.” – Megan Driscoll, PORT

"Jim Lommasson is correct -- we have been denied the real stories and "emotional jolt" of war and those who experienced it. Exit Wounds is a powerful and moving corrective to this condition. Through raw, wise and honest testimonials of warriors and Lommasson's photographs that pierce into their emotional and spiritual lives and truth, Exit Wounds helps restore our awareness about the descent to hell that is war, the transformative dimensions of military experience, and the struggle to find the path home. Exit Wounds awakens and pierces with our denied truths. It provides our survivors necessary voice and portraiture, helping bring them home and making our recent wars, as they should, belong to us all." – Edward Tick, Ph.D., Director, Soldier's Heart Author: War and the Soul and Warrior's Return

"The little long-term, intensive VA outpatient program, for which I was the psychiatrist for 20+ years, had the slogan, “Recovery happens only in community.” Nothing is more important to the formation of community than its stock of images and stories. This book brings the faces and the voices of today’s veterans to you, the reader. Look and listen. They are us. As Aristotle said, a philos—Greek for military comrade, family member, fellow citizen—is “another myself.” ALL of the varied veterans and service members in this book are US."– Dr. Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, Author: Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

"If your first experience with EXIT WOUNDS was anything like mine, you are right now a little bit angry, a little bit sad, a great bit proud of the young men and women in these pages, and achingly grateful to Jim Lommasson for training his thoughtful and humble eye on these soldiers, sailors, and marines." – Anthony Swofford, Author of the military memoirs Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails.

"Lommasson said he didn't want to construct a political statement for or against the current wars. He wanted to listen to veterans who served. And so, veterans began to sit down with him. They are loving parents; bright, ambitious students; or impassioned veteran advocates, despite their own wounds."– Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian

"Exit Wounds: Soldiers' Stories – Life After Iraq and Afghanistan is a subtle meditation on the intimate experience of war. Lommasson illustrates through images, stories and reflections the singular truth that war, beyond a political or economic event, is an experience, and as any experience, as infinitely varied and idiosyncratic as the individuals who experience it." – Jonathan Wei, The Telling Project

"Lommasson experienced the heartbreaking and profound stories directly from the soldiers themselves. The American public has been allowed to function without much awareness of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We were told to go shopping, while soldiers sent abroad returned with their souls, bodies, and consciences shredded, their lives forever altered. Until we hear their stories and accept what we’ve all allowed to happen, the collective denial of “Americanism” is allowed to persist, and the number of these stories increases."– Dahr Jamail, Author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.